President Barack Obama speaks during the 22nd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders’ Meeting at the Yanqi Lake International Convention Center in Beijing. Asia-Pacific and world leaders gathered for the annual summit, with free trade at the top of the agenda as they sought to narrow differences on how to open commerce across the vast region.

President Barack Obama shakes hands with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, third left, as China’s State Councilor Yang Jiechi, second right, stands by during a meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping

A tweet from last year by Cody Full (@CodyFNfootball), the RW media star leading the campaign of vilification against Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl.

There are lots more, like his ceaseless venom towards President Obama, his support for Cliven Bundy, his regular use of ‘Libtard’ – and his scrubbing of his social media offerings that included ‘a N****r’ pic once he began his Twitter campaign against Bergdahl.

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And this, a screenshot from a fundraising site for the other RW media star leading the campaign of vilification against Sergeant Bergdahl, Josh Korder:

That’s right, he is looking for money to help him tell the ‘truth’.

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Both soldiers are everywhere in the media at the moment, casting Bergdahl – and, ultimately, their President – as a traitor, and so far, absolutely nobody has questioned them about any possible agenda.

Korder, for example, appeared on Britain’s Channel 4 news yesterday where he was interviewed by the usually excellent Krishnan Guru-Murthy – but not once was he questioned about a possible personal agenda, or about his efforts to profit from his media tour.

So, anticipate yet another unquestioning chat with Cody Full, a far right racist with a seething hatred for the President – one who was particularly alarmed by Sergeant Bergdahl’s habit of reading books and desire to learn languages other than his own. Which he thought made him weird

Maybe they are. Maybe Sergeant Bergdahl does have serious questions to answer – no one knows for certain yet.

But before the media present ‘witnesses’, shouldn’t they at least vet these people to check for motives? You know, a simple Twitter search would do the job.

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My own hunch, for what it’s worth (not much): Sergeant Bergdahl is a thinking man, unlike Cody and Josh, who was horrified by what went on in his unit, and was utterly disillusioned and depressed by it all and the pointless war he had signed up for. He was, I think, just 23 at the time, and had witnessed unrelenting carnage, much of it committed by his own unit. And, so, he broke down. And wandered away.

A traitor?

No. A broken human being.

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Interesting:

Few people considering possibility that soldiers from his unit are slamming Bergdahl because there’s something he could expose

As his tour dragged on, the hellish reality of war – including seeing an Afghan child run over by an American truck – weighed on Bergdahl, who came to see America’s presence in Afghan as “disgusting.”

“I am sorry for everything here,” Bowe told his parents. “These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid…

“We don’t even care when we hear each other talk about running their children down in the dirt streets with our armored trucks.”

Cody Full says he’s lying. But why would he lie about something like that in a personal email to his parents?

He can’t have known then that those personal emails would become public.

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Is that what’s behind the campaign against Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl?

He knows stuff.

Stuff the racist Cody and profit-seeking Josh really, really don’t want anyone to know – so, best brand Bergdahl as a traitor, with the the help of an unquestioning media.

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Love and best wishes to the Bergdahl family. The hate they are enduring is simply beyond belief.

Gail Collins (NYT): …. Every country has a sizable contingent of mentally ill citizens. We’re the one that gives them the technological power to play god. This is all about guns – access to guns and the ever-increasing firepower of guns. Over the past few years we’ve seen one shooting after another in which the killer was wielding weapons holding 30, 50, 100 bullets. I’m tired of hearing …. that the founding fathers specifically wanted to make sure Americans retained their right to carry rifles capable of mowing down dozens of people in a couple of minutes.

….. We will undoubtedly have arguments about whether tougher regulation on gun sales or extra bullet capacity would have made a difference in Connecticut. In a way it doesn’t matter. America needs to tackle gun violence because we need to redefine who we are. We have come to regard ourselves – and the world has come to regard us – as a country that’s so gun happy that the right to traffic freely in the most obscene quantities of weapons is regarded as far more precious than an American’s right to health care or a good education.

We have to make ourselves better. Otherwise, the story from Connecticut is too unspeakable to bear…..

Josh Marshall (TPM): …. I generally have no interest in writing things that amount to counsels of despair or suggestions that there’s no possible solution. But I have a hard time not doing that in this case….

… there are some 300 million guns in the US. Just under half the population owns a firearm. Let’s assume some truly radical shift in public opinion in the country and new regulations and laws get that number down to 200 million. What does that accomplish exactly?

…. I’m hearing a lot of people saying we need to talk about guns, restart that conversation. And I agree, at least in the abstract. But what exactly are we talking about? And how we propose to get from here to there? How do we make our country less of a moral embarrassment.

…. I’m not trying to stop the discussion. I want to start it. But I’m looking for some guidance on how it can be about more than words.

Gregory Gibson (NYT): MY wife and I learned about the Connecticut school shootings on our way home from the cemetery, where we had just finished observing the 20th anniversary of our son’s murder. Our son Galen, who was 18, and a teacher were killed on Dec. 14, 1992, by a deranged student who went on a shooting rampage …

In the wake of Galen’s murder, I wrote a book about the shooting. In it I suggested that we view gun crime as a public health issue, much the same as smoking or pesticides. I spent a number of years attending rallies, signing petitions, writing letters and making speeches, but eventually I gave up. Gun control … inexplicably became a third-rail issue for politicians.

I came to realize that, in essence, this is the way we in America want things to be. We want our freedom, and we want our firearms, and if we have to endure the occasional school shooting, so be it….

Liberal Librarian (The People’s View): ….. The fetishistic devotion to “gun rights” among the NRA and its supporters lead inexorably to tragedies like [yesterday’s]. When it’s easier to legally purchase a gun than to legally acquire a driver’s license, it’s way past time to step back and consider a nation’s priorities.

…. Among gun rights advocates, the 2nd Amendment has become a totem with no meaning, a dead letter. They focus on half of the bill, ignoring that bearing arms was a conditional right, written into the Constitution for a republic that did not plan on having a large standing army, where militia units would make up a large part of its armed strength during any war, and thus citizens had to have the means to participate.

…. The NRA is one of the most influential lobbies in the country, with influence among both Republicans and Democrats. The only hope to counter it and neuter it is a mass movement of people who answer those who bray about their right to own guns with the even more emphatic response that we have a right not to be shot. Until that happens, events like [yesterday’s] will be repeated at a sadly regular clip.

Charles Blow (NYT): …. How many more deaths and mass shootings will it take for Washington to begin to lead the country in a deeper conversation about sensible gun controls? What will it take for our politicians to take firm and principled positions on gun policies and stand up to the gun lobby in this country? Surely this is a moment that calls all of us to reckoning.

…. while gun control advocates grow more quiet, the gun lobby grows stronger and louder ….. “For gun rights groups, 2012 was the most active election cycle since 2000. They contributed a total of $3 million to candidates, 96 percent of them Republicans.” ….

…. Where are the voices for those who choose not to – or are not old enough to – own guns? Are the gunless to have no advocate? Will our politicians forever cower before the gun lobby?

Charles Pierce: …. my fellow Papists … if you all would be so kind, please shut the fk up about birth control, abortion, and this neverending madness about what ladies do with their lady parts without the pope’s permission.

….. please stop going on my television set and telling me what “the Catholic position” is on the fact that the president has told various Catholic institutions – and told them quite gently, too – that, yes, if they want all those nice juicy tax advantages, they must abide by the federal law and, in their capacities as employers, make contraceptives available to their employees under the new Affordable Care Act.

There is no “Catholic position” on this issue. There are the opinions of the clerical bureaucrats and the members of the Clan of The Red Beanie, and then there is the opinion of the overwhelming majority of Catholic laypeople, who stopped listening to anything the Vatican said on the matter of birth control back in 1965.

…. For that matter, there is no real “Catholic vote” out there to be mined, either. A breakdown of how American Catholics vote on one particular issue or another pretty much tracks with how the country in general breaks down … Catholics made up their mind on this issue long ago. They stopped listening to Rome, and to the Chancery, and most of them are much better off.

Kevin Drum: …. I guess I’m tired of religious groups operating secular enterprises (hospitals, schools), hiring people of multiple faiths, serving the general public, taking taxpayer dollars – and then claiming that deeply held religious beliefs should exempt them from public policy …. I imagine the “religious community” in the United States would be a wee bit more understanding if the Obama administration refused to condone the practice.

…. if Catholic hospitals don’t want to follow reasonable, 21st century secular rules, they need to make themselves into truly religious enterprises. In particular, they need to stop taking secular taxpayer money. As long as they do, though, they should follow the same rules as anyone else.

Josh Kraushaar (National Journal): If President Obama wins re-election, he’ll point to the last couple of weeks as a turning point. He’s sharpened his economic message, emphasized fairness for the middle class, and most importantly, he’s benefited from an economy that’s showing some signs of improvement.

But the most underplayed development are signs that the president’s approval rating is ticking upwards with the group most resistant to him, non-college educated, working-class whites. Over the last week, several surveys have suggested that Obama is gaining some ground with this group, in both national and statewide polling. If these gains stick, it’s something that should be very concerning to the Romney campaign, which is dependent on winning overwhelming support from blue-collar white voters as part of a winning GOP coalition.

…. As Buffalo Springfield once sang: “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” Pay very close attention to Obama’s numbers with the white working-class. The assumption was that they were hardened against the president. But there’s some fresh evidence that could be changing.

Bloomberg: President Barack Obama nominated Air Force Lieutenant General Janet Wolfenbarger to be the service’s first female four-star general and the military’s second woman to reach the highest rank.

Wolfenbarger, the Air Force’s top uniformed official for weapons development, was also nominated as commander of the Air Force’s Materiel Command, according to a Defense Department statement today. The positions are subject to Senate confirmation.

The first woman with four stars in the U.S. military, Army General Ann Dunwoody, was confirmed in 2008 and is commanding general of that service’s Materiel Command.

Obama Foodorama: Expect some hilarious Let’s Move! hijinks on Tuesday night when First Lady Michelle Obama cameos in a video segment on NBC talk show Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The comic visited Mrs. Obama last week at the White House to film the outing, which will air as part of this week’s celebration of the second anniversary of the Let’s Move! campaign. Among other fitness activities, the First Lady had Fallon running up and down the historic White House stairs, he said when he announced the upcoming cameo…..